Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.

Interpreting the Latin American Soul- Enrique Krauze’s “Redeemers”

Enrique Krauze is a well-known historian in Mexico. He is also a documentary filmmaker and television talking head renowned for his mellifluous basso voice, a publisher of elegant coffee-table books and a canny operator within the upper murks of Mexican politics. He is the editor of a glossy highbrow magazine called Letras Libres.

There are corners of the Spanish-speaking universe in which he is omnipresent, and even a few corners of the English-speaking universe in which his byline is hard to miss. I have been following his work for decades. I subscribe to his magazine. Occasionally I contribute to it. He has always seemed to me a keen and judicious political observer, worldly and instinctively liberal.

But now it occurs to me that he is also marked by a rare and attractive gift for noticing the several ways that, under the bright sun of the imagination, the kingdom of politics and the kingdom of literature sometimes merge.